The Democratic Party has a new establishment leader: Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. And it has flipped the woke Democratic Party insiders on their heads.
A new survey from A-rated polling firm AtlasIntel shows the 36-year-old far-Left congresswoman from New York leading the 2028 Democratic presidential primary with 26% support, a 10-point jump since December.
AOC is running far ahead of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 22.4%, California Gov. Gavin Newsom at 21.2%, and former Vice President Kamala Harris, the failed 2024 Democratic presidential candidate who has collapsed to fourth place with just 12.9% of support.
That means Harris has less than half of an outspoken socialist’s support in the Democratic Party.
The same poll found that 79% of Americans believe the Democratic Party is facing a leadership crisis.
Democrats complain their party is without a clear direction, a clear message, or a clear leader… and increasingly are drawn to the most woke, extremist option available.
AOC has been careful not to show her hand. When Democratic strategist David Axelrod pressed her directly about a White House run at a Chicago event last week, she played coy.
“My ambition is to change the country,” she told Axelrod. “Presidents come and go… elected officials come and go. But single-payer healthcare is forever.”
Former White House press secretary and MS NOW host Jen Psaki praised Ocasio-Cortez, called it “probably the best answer anyone’s given to this question in… in a very, very long time.”
Nate Silver, the founder of 538.com, has publicly declared AOC his favorite to win the 2028 Democratic nomination.
The remaining moderate Democrats are not celebrating the rise of socialism within their party. Some of the centrists fear Ocasio-Cotez is simply the latest version of a recurring nightmare: a charismatic Marxist who dominates primaries and collapses in general elections when normal Americans get a look.
Harris lost in 2024 by a landslide because voters saw her as too woke and progressive. Ocasio-Cortez would face the same problem… but worse. When pollsters asked respondents to pick between two candidates, only 50% saw AOC as likely to win the general election. Seventy-two percent said the same about Newsom.
Among voters aged 23 to 29, AOC leads with 33%. Among voters 45 and older, her support drops below 10%.
The Democratic party’s old guard ran an “Anybody But AOC” operation to try and hide the rise of socialists for years. It isn’t working.
Obama is gone. Biden is senile. Harris is fading. Newsom has dropped 14 points in a single poll cycle.
And the outspoken socialists they’ve spent years trying to contain is now at the top of the field.